SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: European Travels for the Monstrous Gentlewoman by Theodora Goss

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman (Athena Club #2) by Theodora Goss: https://t.co/vGAPj0PzCu Short Review: 6.5 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) January 30, 2019

Short Review (Cont): Mary Jekyll, Diana Hyde and the rest of the Athena Club travel Europe to stop further experiments of the Societe des Alchimistes upon innocent women - such as Lucinda Van Helsing - in a fun adventure that's just way way too long. (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) January 30, 2019

European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman is the sequel to Theodora Goss' "The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter" (reviewed here).  I enjoyed that book quite a lot, but felt it was a bit of an origin story for its set of heroines, the "Athena Club" - a group of "monster" women who were experimented on by their fathers for the sake of science, all of whom were taken from literary classics.  So this series tells the story of Mary Jekyll and Diana Hyde, Justine Frankenstein, Beatrice Rappaccini, and Catherine Moreau as they try and help others like themselves and stop the mad scientists in Post-Victorian Europe from causing more harm. Now that the first book's origin story of the group was complete, I was excited to see where the book would go as it handled the sequel hooks placed at the beginning of the first book and beyond.

And well, I enjoyed this book, which again contains excellent heroines, an interesting and twisty plot, and an often funny meta-style of writing.  But the book is LONG - it's over 700 pages long compared to the first book's 450 or so, and while it never gets outright boring, it never quite manages to justify the page length - like an enjoyable movie that's 3 hours long and makes you wish it was just over 2.  The result is that if the third book isn't cut back to a more reasonable length, I'll probably not be going on with the series since it kind of felt like a chore to get all the way through this one, even though I enjoyed it - but if you liked the first book, you should definitely still give this a try and maybe the pacing will work better for you.

-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
Having received word from her old governess of another young woman, Lucinda Van Helsing, being experimented on by the Societe des Alchimistes (the "SA" or Alchemical Society), the Athena Club begins to plan a trip to Vienna to try and rescue her and find out more about what the SA is up to.

The Athena Club being:
Mary Jekyll, calm rational leader;
Diana Hyde, impulsive aggressive reprobate;
Justine Frankenstein, scientific and super strong, brought back from the dead;
Beatrice Rappaccini, the Poisonous woman, knowledgeable about toxins, medicines and herbs;
Catherine Moreau, the Puma Lady, and narrator of this tale.

Using their various skills, the club finds out that the SA has plans for Ms. Van Helsing and that the sinister scientists behind their own creations are planning a new action at a meeting of the SA in Budapest.  And so the club departs in two groups to try and stop them, with the help of Sherlock Holmes' former ally, Irene Norton (nee Adler).  But as they become more and more mixed up with the sinister agents of the SA, they will find that even more of what they knew was not quite what it seemed, and that if they fail in their rescue mission, the SA's mad experiments will expand to a far more dangerous level....
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Like its predecessor, this book is told in a rather meta fashion, as if it was a novel written by Catherine (though the book is more often told from Mary's perspective) for an audience in this fictional universe, in order to fund the Athena Club's activities.  To make it more meta, the Athena Club members (and their assistants) often chime up and interrupt the story as its being told, in what are frequently humorous asides.  It works rather well and makes the story stand out quite a bit, especially now that we actually know all of these characters by the time this story begins (in the last book, they'd interrupt before they were actually introduced).

In my review of this book's predecessor, I noted that the mysteries of the SA were far more interesting than the murder mystery that was ostensibly the center of that book's plot, and I hoped that the sequel would delve head-on into that mystery.  And this book certainly does that, to my immense satisfaction, with more mad scientists introduced, some of whom of very different persuasions than the group we have seen earlier and with different intentions.  They form a very excellent adversary for our heroines to go up against, and the answers revealed in this book are quite satisfying for now.

Meanwhile, the main characters, as well as the side characters, remain a lot of fun, especially with how they poke fun of themselves in the asides, with each having their own different attitudes towards things as they progress.  And then there's the additional side characters we meet here - as with the first book, other famous literary characters show up in this book - so now we get Irene Norton (nee Adler) as master spy and help, Mina Harker and of course Count Dracula (minor spoiler, but when the book is about rescuing a Van Helsing, you should be expecting this at this point).  Honestly, a flaw in the book is about how many damn characters there are, to the point where several bit players from the prior book return and I really couldn't keep them straight.

Still, while the book is a lot of fun, it's also got some serious pacing issues.  The book is LONG - 700+ pages, over 250 more pages than the first book - and a lot of the events that occur, particularly in the early middle, don't really have a major bearing on the resolution (and some of them are not for this book but for setting up events that are teased in the book's cliffhanger and thus feel kind of annoying in retrospect).  A large element of the book is Catherine telling the story from various points of view - usually Mary's - and explaining how the world looks in that character's perspective, and these long descriptive flourishes aren't....annoying per se, but they get so repetitive in terms of content that I would very often wind up skimming them hard.

And while the book's outcome is satisfying, the last chapter sets up a major cliffhanger which annoyed me more than anything, as the cliffhanger is the result of several teased plot threads throughout which never go anywhere until the cliffhanger shows up to tease them being resolved next book.  Will I read that next book?  Honestly, it may depend upon how long the book is - if it's another 700 page (or 24 hour audiobook) epic, I'm going to skip it.  If it's the same 450 page (14 hour) length as the first book, I'll probably give it a try.  We'll see.  As it is, if you enjoyed the first book, you'll probably enjoy European Travels for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, provided you can commit yourself to a lengthy experience.